(Tbilisi) Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said Thursday that he hoped for a peace agreement with Azerbaijan “in the coming months”, after Baku’s military victory in September against the Armenian separatists of Nagorno-Karabakh.
“We are currently working with Azerbaijan on a draft peace agreement and regulation of our relations. I hope that this process will be completed successfully in the coming months,” Mr. Pashinian said during a conference in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.
The Armenian leader also hoped for progress “in the near future” to reopen “to citizens of third countries and holders of diplomatic passports” the border between Armenia and Turkey, closed since the 1990s.
Previously, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that a peace agreement with Yerevan could be signed before the end of the year.
Mr. Pashinian’s rather optimistic remarks come at a time when many Armenian officials fear that Baku, better armed and strengthened by its alliance with Turkey, could launch a major military offensive against Armenia.
The two countries have a tenacious hatred for each other and clashed in two wars for control of Nagorno-Karabakh, one between 1988 and 1994 and the other in the fall of 2020.
Then in September 2023, Azerbaijan achieved a lightning military reconquest of the entire separatist territory.
Almost the entire Armenian population of the region, more than 100,000 people out of the 120,000 officially recorded, has since fled to Armenia.
Various formats of talks exist between Armenia and Azerbaijan, notably under the aegis of Moscow and the West, but so far no agreement has been reached.